Whitehall Mall Struggles * Some Merchants Are On Month-to-month Leases As They Await Changes.

July 19, 1997|by SUSAN TODD, The Morning Call

Prakash Thakrar's business is wilting and it has nothing to do with the heat.

Thakrar sells lottery tickets, cigarettes and every now and then, a video, from a small shop inside the Whitehall Mall.

For the past year, he and dozens of other merchants have been waiting for something to happen to change the mall's downward slide.

Kravco, the King of Prussia-based firm that manages the 31-year-old mall, has indicated that there are plans in the works.

While the merchants haven't heard anything official, some of them have signed monthly leases, Thakrar said. Others have left.

"I think they owe us an explanation of whether they're going to renovate or not," Thakrar said. "Our livelihood depends on it."

Tim Herb, Kravco's assistant director of development, said the mall's owners are considering "a couple of ideas to redevelop the mall."

Kravco has met with Whitehall Township officials several times since the beginning of the year, but no formal development plans have been submitted.

Herb said the owners, a partnership of investors operating as Whitemak Associates, are still "looking at options."

"The mall itself is not a successful operation. Anyone can see that," Herb said.

"The reality is, we've been planning this for eight years," he said, "but there's a lot of reasons that make it extremely difficult."

The mall, overshadowed for years by the more glitzy Lehigh Valley Mall, lost much of its vitality when Leh's Department Store and Clover closed their doors last summer.

Despite its location in the heart of MacArthur Boulevard, a commercial corridor humming with traffic, the mall is struggling. There are 18 vacant stores.

Herb said the 73 stores aren't commanding the rents the owners would like to see. And merchants aren't seeing the shopping traffic that they have in the past.

"We are frustrated. They have an obligation to manage it well," said Thakrar, who said his sales have dropped by about 10 percent since last year.

Hildegard Bothner, who owns Nomad Travel Service Inc. which has been in the mall since 1966, said she deliberated over whether to spend $2,000 to repair her rooftop air conditioning unit earlier this week because of the mall's uncertain future.

"I have to know something," she said on Tuesday.

"This is why the store owners are so angry," Bothner said. "They've done nothing for us and they leave us hanging."

Many of the merchants, including Bothner and Thakrar, submitted a petition demanding to know Kravco's plans.

Subsequently, they did learn a little more. During a visit to the mall on Wednesday, a leasing agent for Kravco described plans to some merchants, including Bothner, about how the mall may be converted into a linear shopping center.

While the agent had plenty of details, Bothner said he still described it "as a hope."

Herb said converting the mall into a linear shopping center, or strip mall, is among the proposals being considered. Formal plans will be filed with the township "soon," he said.

"If you think we don't care about the merchants, that's not true," Herb said. "Something needs to be done."